The Kikyo Effect
by Dr. Abraxas
Summary: An American occultist goes to Japan with Hojo to investigate a paranormal mystery involving WWII, time and space altering experiments, and Kikyo. Written in reply to the Kill-Off Challenge @IY-Kaidan.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: before you begin reading this story you need to know a few important bits of information otherwise, wow, your interpretation will be way off. if you've watched Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade then you already know Hollywood discovered the Nazi's obsession with the occult. what you may be unaware of, though, is that the obsession is not a fabrication of Hollywood. the Nazis really were obsessed with the occult. Hitler and the rest of the monsters employed psychics and mediums, they turned Nostradomuses prophesies into pieces of propaganda and, as they there losing the war, they tried to weaponize certain facets of occultism. many books have been written about their advanced technology and the fate of many German scientists post-WWII (in case you don't know, look up Operation Paperclip - many NASA scientists were German scientists responsible for the V2 rockets). I am a fan of the occult, I enjoy conspiracy theories, simply because they make great fiction. This story is an attempt to marry the occult with fanfiction. It is also a horror story written for a Halloween contest.

the first chapter is setup; it establishes who the narrator is and what his interests are; later chapters talk about the Kikyo Effect itself and there will be various allusions and connections to Kikyo (obviously) and Naraku. Hojo also plays a part. the story is complete as a draft but I don't have enough free time to edit everything at once that's why it's being posted section by section. sorry y'all, just bear with me a little.

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**"The Kikyo Effect" by Abraxas (2009-10-04)**

_"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."_ - H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Call of Cthulhu'

I trust that you, my reader, already know of my career as a historian of the occult. I have been published in various journals and anthologies devoted to, among other subjects, cryptozoology, Fortianism, alien intervention and abduction, and the occultism of the Nazis. It was, in particular, my research regarding 'the Bell' that launched me into this webwork of evil I scarcely could have imagined. It is true that the work, the methods, and the intentions of the occult sectors of Nazism plumbed the maddening depths of barbarism yet know they were not alone and others sunk further....

In July of 2010 I was invited to a symposium in Japan. Its topic dealt with the Nazi's suppressed and controversial technology. As the only visiting expert regarding 'the Bell' I was tasked to inaugurate the event with a lecture dedicated to that which many consider to be the apex of occultism.

I presented a tour-de-force of what was already known about 'the Bell', then, I veered into my own personal theory of it. I warned that my speculation would be difficult to accept and I apologized if my effort was judged a waste of time. I always fancied myself a _respected_ authority because I refrained from wild and outlandish conjecture. However, evidence that I and many, many others uncovered in the archives of the KGB, suggest an event that if revealed without context would have spelt the end of a career.

I will not abuse the sensibilities of my reader with too thorough a background of the subject of 'the Bell'. That alone trumps by its volume of material and eclipses with its implications the object of my narrative as I type. I direct those who wish a detailed study to read the Fall 2010 edition of the Miskatonic University's Occult Quarterly which exposes my research and the findings of my colleagues about this matter.

I summarize the salient points below:

First, that with the advance of the allies, the Nazis were desperate to find a 'wunderweapon', whose impact would have turned the tide of defeat.

Second, that their desperation was total and they employed not only science but occultism to gain any kind of advantage over the allies.

Third, that as part of their program to expand their technology, they employed psychics to 'contact' beings from other worlds.

And, fourth, that such alien science, copied crudely through clairvoyance, was used to construct 'the Bell'.

Nothing short of that explained the curious way the Nazis built it. It had to be a vision that somebody with remote sensing ability witnessed and the scientists, unsure of its function, built it to its last, insignificant detail - even including a series of hieroglyphs at its base.

Yes, 'the Bell', its purpose was unknown to its builders. They hoped it was (could be transformed into) a weapon. It possessed a slew of qualities that proved its lethality - its radiation caused a group of scientists to 'disappear' similar to the way the crew of the battleship USS Eldritch disappeared. Soon their analysis of it confirmed that among its functions it was a mechanism capable of manipulating time and space itself.

Let me add that the ability of 'the Bell' to defy gravity was not lost on its builders. It is believed by a few that 'the Bell' was the propulsion of what is called the Nazi-UFO. It is a subject I will be revisiting soon.

Where I differ with my colleagues is this: I do not believe it was used as propulsion, instead, I believe it was the heart of a time-machine.

I discovered a record of testimony, evidence, extracted by the KGB out of those who worked the tunnels beneath the eastern half of Germany. Many of those tunnels were discovered, blasted shut with debris, as allies reconquered the land Nazis took by force. A similar network of caves was said to comprise the Bunker.

Among the stories told by the survivors was that of a group of about 3000 individuals, mostly soldiers with their family, who ventured into a tunnel. The group ventured into the abyss with a vast supply of weapons, ammunition, and other daily supplies - enough, perhaps, to start a colony. That particular tunnel housed a working, 'time-machine' model of 'the Bell' and when the Soviets discovered it, cleared it, not a trace could be found and there was no other way in and out of that passage.

I believe that group of men, women, and children formed the Nazi's last desperate attempt to retain their power. I believe that 'colony' was sent into a different time (or, perhaps, into a different space) where they were tasked to rebuild. And I suspect the Bunker was similarly fitted with a 'time-machine'.

The audience was polite but I felt I went too far with my speculation. The question and answer session that followed, thankfully, did not yield any vocal confrontation against the theory I espoused. Rather, the people were fascinated by the subject of Nazi-UFO's, I, relieved, explained the concept with the dogma produced by years of research.

I returned to America still regretting my folly. I should not have veered so far off the reservation. I was consoled by the fact that my colleagues did not abandon me. And that, thankfully - as always - the media did not report anything about the matter.

All was quiet and peace. My life in the Dakotas returned to normal when I received a letter by a certain A. Hojo of Japan - the organizer of the symposium. I remembered Hojo passingly and my research of the name revealed little about the man. He was curiously connected to a royal family of Japan yet much remained unclear as if somebody labored to alter the record. Hojo, though, was affable and said to be wealthy. A patron of the occult.

Although we communicated by letter, initially, we became very fast friends as I found with Hojo a fellow traveler in the realm of the mysterious. The correspondence expanded my knowledge of UFOs in general. It included information about Japan's involvement in the development of post-WWII technology. I was intrigued by that and by elements of Japan's brush with the occult.

Suddenly I could not resist - my eyes were gazing into a whole new world parallel to and in certain ways superior to what the Nazis were perpetrating. Unlike the Germans, whose forays into the spiritual is the stuff of myth, the Japanese always maintained a strict adherence to practicality. They eschewed what they described as their ally's decadence. Their object was material, not ethereal, yet in spite of that ideological difference their destination appeared to be remarkably identical.

It is due to geopolitics that the bulk of what Japan accomplished from 1920 to 1945 remains unknown. America, the only power in possession of Japan at the close of the war, was privy to all of its secrets. Its forays into advanced, if not alien-inspired, technology. Everything that could be was exported into the West and, according to Hojo, that was responsible for America's and Japan's rise in the post-war years.

Many credit the UFO at Roswell and the re-engineering of its technology as the source of advancements like transistor, however, if my contact was correct, while there was indeed a 'UFO' at Roswell, it was not alien.

The object that crashed into the desert of Roswell was entirely _terrestrial_. Japanese to be exact. And the so-called 'alien' bodies reportedly snatched at the site were not aliens but humans whose deformities - often described as demonic - made them candidates for experimentation on both sides of the Pacific. Others were prisoners of war, subject to surgeries designed to replicate a 'typical' alien appearance, in the event that they escaped into the world.

At the start of the spring, 2011, still troubled by a pang of guilt, I felt I exhausted myself regarding Nazi (and Western) occultism. I learned that Japan possessed a rich, occult history equal to Europe and complete with its own versions of alchemy and demonology. It seemed to be the best location to start my study anew. I thought that through Hojo, who already came to my cabin in the woods of the Dakotas, I would be able to explore another facet of the subject I did not know existed.

For the next several months we passed information back and forth. We exchanged knowledge and speculation. We debated the facts as only men of our calling would be able to. And with the emergence of a new apex of occultism - the Kikyo Effect - I was determined to revisit Japan and investigate those sites where its experiments were conducted.


	2. Chapter 2

Bound by the confines of this paper, limited by time and fading, faulty memory, I cannot thoroughly summarize the whole of what I uncovered through years of researching Japan. Rather, let me focus the attention onto a set of specific and curious revelations, which coincide with my speculation regarding 'the Bell'. That apex of occultism, its blending of time and space, was the reason why my friend Hojo contacted me initially.

I wonder if laymen find it incredible to accept, given the nature of the subject, yet know the truth that time-travel - and, particularly, time-travel by humans - is often met with scorn by true, serious occultists. It is a very sound policy, though, as the field is ripe with charlatans who cling onto the thinnest strands of evidences to support their claims. We strive to weed the discipline of those whose actions only serve themselves at the cost of our collective respectability.

That was why I hesitated to expose my theory - yet Hojo shared my view regarding 'the Bell' and knew, as if by instinct, the reality of human time-travel.

In December of 2012, my third trip to Japan, my contact informed me of a breakthrough about the still top-secret project called the Kikyo Effect. The project had been alluded to often across a slew of other, classified experiments conducted by the Japanese. However, those glimpses of a wider network of investigation did not lift its veil of mystery, until my friend uncovered a memorandum.

The document, which circulated among the highest military circles, gave us the push that unravelled the mystery.

It was late 1944 / early 1945, the Japanese Imperial Navy was destroyed by any kind of measure, the archipelago's supply of fuel was choked. That lead to a sharp drop in production and crippled offensive military operation. The rulers were desperate to find alternative sources of energies to power their war. It seemed, initially, that the so-called Kikyo Effect was key to tapping what their allies in Europe termed 'Zero Point Energy'. ('Zero Point Energy' is the energy embedded within time and space itself and was a subject of research by the Nazis.)

The memorandum, that Hojo obtained through a dear family friend and a source who survived the machinations of war, offered a trove of clues. The names and addresses it contained pointed us toward the Museum of History in Tokyo. While much of that establishment had been destroyed, the records, with which we were interested, survived through rather miraculous efforts. The documentation allowed us to connect scattered bits and pieces of information we already suspected and together we formed the history of events that culminated with the discovery of the Kikyo Effect.

We deduced the following:

It was summer, 1596, a cave was discovered about 60 miles south of Tokyo. The record noted it unusual because the content included a clay (and life-like) army. The Daimyo did not know what to make of the find beyond the usual suspicion of witchcraft. The statues, although delicate, were transported into a palace. Later they appeared to rot as if their clay was, in fact, flesh.

In the 1700's the cave, named 'Naraku' by farmers, was used by a warlord to house armaments.

At the dawn of the Meiji restoration, between the 1860's and 1870's, it was similarly employed by the Shinsengumi.

After the Meiji restoration the cave was explored by archaeologists who learned of the statues that had been discovered almost three hundred years prior. The research, funded by the Museum of History in Tokyo, was aimed at uncovering what other aspects of Japan's remote history that remained and could be found still.

The activity peaked in 1881 when diggers revealed a chamber behind a solid wall of rubble. That cavity had been sealed unnaturally. Inside they discovered relics similar to the implements used by alchemists in the 1400's. They found lamps and flintstones. They found journals written illegibly, hastily. They evidence indicating somebody had been alive and working within that cavity _after_ it had been separated from the rest of the world. Then, under a blanket, they found a truly shocking discovery.

The paperwork of the expedition's investigator - a man named Kagewaki - was detailed except at the point where the men discover the blanket. Those pages seemed altered as though an attempt was made to erase the words by writing atop it. Enough of the original remained to allow a reconstruction of what followed.

At fist the impression was that beneath the blanket lay the body of a woman. Although the remains were dressed with the white and red robes of a miko, the superstitious of the group proclaimed the figure the witch, guilty of the alchemy they unearthed. Of course, she was dead by suffocation, she was dead at least four hundred years yet preserved as if asleep. Kagewaki claimed to be unnaturally moved by the figure's ageless youth and appearance - he claimed she was not aged a day beyond twenty although he did not specify how he came to that value.

Then, when the lamp was aimed directly at the face of the corpse, the group saw its eyes follow the motion of the light. The eyes blinked. A shriek echoed through the alcove - whether it came from the men or from the figure Kagewaki could not say. The figure was alive, still, at least a few seconds.

The woman's face 'cracked'. A web of fissures spread across the features. The sharp sound of snapping followed and the figure quivered. With a gasp the body shattered like a vase - the clothes collapsed and a large portion of the skull rolled along the ground.

It had been a clay doll like the soldiers they heard about.

The pieces were collected and transported to the Museum of History. In the metropolis of Tokyo, the chief archeologist Kagewaki studied the remains minutely. Through a decade of work he reconstructed the body of the woman who, he felt, died by the shock of seeing his face. Yes, Kagewaki was strangely almost obsessively attached, going as far as to name the find 'the Kikyo Lady'. He displayed the restoration as part of an exhibit and provided visitors quite a lurid story about who she was and what she might have been doing inside of that cave.

The story would have been forgotten to obscurity except that 'the Kikyo Lady' crossed paths with a clairvoyant who worked with the military at the start of the 1920's. The psychic, K. Higurashi, a student (and admirer) of Tesla, asked to study the remains after a visit to its exhibit induced a 'very acute vibration'. Kagewaki (alive despite a possible age of 90) was eager to let the agent work.

The name Higurashi appeared significant to Hojo. He wondered if the clairvoyant, K. Higurashi, was related to the family by that Higurashi a member of which revealed that memorandum. He related that certain inexplicable events, related to a youth of that clan, started his fascination with occultism. Specifically it was about a girl named Kagome - she lived inside of the temple of the Higurashi which closed recently with the death of its patriarch.

According to my friend, at the age of fifteen, the girl tended to vanish weeks at a time while the family covered it by issuing a series of excuses, usually medical. He believed what they said until a little research proved it was impossible to survive the combinations of illnesses they claimed she suffered. Later, at the age of eighteen, the girl vanished and did not return. Now the family said she went to America.

He did not accept it. Disturbed by it, he struck a friendship with the elder of the clan, in order to glean what happened to Kagome. At the end it was the patriarch who revealed the secret. The truth involved a well kept at the rear of the temple. Apparently, it was a portal into another epoch - same space, different time - he revealed it to be a gateway into the Feudal Era.

Kagome did not go to America - she transported five hundred years into the past.

Hojo wondered if, indeed, there was a connection not only between the generations of Higurashis but also between the Kikyo Effect and the well. Maybe a part of that experiment survived the war. Maybe it, whatever it was, caused the well to operate like 'the Bell'?

Unfortunately, with respect to the Kikyo Lady and the fates of Kagewaki and K. Higurashi, the trail stagnated. Beyond the history already outlined, we discovered photographs of the Kikyo Lady, as well as photographs of Kagewaki and K. Higurashi. We were surprised that the archeologist, despite portrayed at the age of ninety, did not look past fifty. We were also surprised K. Higurashi was a woman - a rare accomplishment to be a student of Tesla's at that era.

The documents that could have shed light on the subject were not released. A few must have been deemed classified even into the 21st Century. It was also possible that the information was destroyed prior to occupation in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of the Americans. It was also likely that the knowledge was transferred, wholesale, overseas therefore these Japanese leads would have proved to be dead-ends.

I did not believe everything about the Kikyo Effect was out of reach. Although, at that juncture no single document revealed what exactly it was, the memorandum and the volume of other clandestine experiments that referenced it showed the Kikyo Effect was too important to squander.

My hunch to visit the city's hall of records proved fruitful. I learned that K. Higurashi was, in fact, Kanna Higurashi. A cross-reference with a database of declassified military operations showed that she was also a student of Otto Cerny - the scientist at the center of 'the Bell' - and that she participated with another top-secret project named 'Fox Fire'.

'Fox Fire' was not as classified as the Kikyo Effect and soon we located a site where experiments related to that project were conducted - a warehouse owned by the Taisho, a wealthy exporting family. We paused the investigation of the Kikyo Effect in order to pursue that apparently connected matter of 'Fox Fire'. We contacted the owners of the warehouse and sought permission to enter.


	3. Chapter 3

While Hojo contacted a strangely cooperative member of the Taisho, I continued my own, in-depth investigation of project 'Fox Fire', eager to see the way these threads weaved together.

Project 'Fox Fire' involved an attempt to revive the dead with the use of electromagnetism. The volume of information available regarding that experiment, although scattered across multitudes of archives, seemed limitless if you knew where to look and how to analyze its disarray. The authorities, pre or post occupation, either they failed to grasp the sensitivity of the work or they felt its aim was so ludicrous no attempt to censor was required - people would have scoffed at it.

The bodies of casualties, military and civilian, were stripped of flesh. The flesh, along with salts imbued with ions and a hydrated concentration of clay, was mixed into a concoction. The amalgam was plastic and able to hold its shape. The shaped were carved by hand into tendons, muscles, ligaments, skins then reattached onto the bodies.

Caked by that mixture, the corpses were placed inside of long, metal tubes, where they were heated until solid. A static electromagnetic pulse was applied within the tubes. A few minutes later the mixture's texture was altered into a form that resembled flesh.

The corpses reacted as if alive, however, the effect of that reanimation proved to be illusionary. Only the reflexive and involuntary motions of muscles were replicated. Awareness and the other mental functions were absent. The bodies did not communicate - beyond a wail - and could not reply to the commands of the researchers.

Reanimation was temporary; as soon as the pulse was removed the bodies returned to a state of death and the mixture cracked often shattering into fragments.

The connection with the Kikyo Lady, and the Kikyo Effect, was obvious. The clay army of soldiers. The discovery of a (living) Kikyo Lady 'doll'. The alchemy no doubt scribbled within those journals. Clearly, project 'Fox Fire' was the offspring of Kagewaki's and Higurashi's work with the Kikyo Effect, whatever that turned out to be.

I reported these discoveries to Hojo and we agreed with the assessment. We also agreed that project 'Fox Fire' would have been the kind of experiment favored by the military at the close of the war. The defenders of the empire, desperate to increase the size of their forces, could have used the dead if it needed to be that way. Project 'Fox Fire' failed, though, because of its inability to duplicate completely the work that kept the Kikyo Lady 'alive' enough to survive alone through the course of centuries inside of that cave.

We returned to the matter of the warehouse. We hoped a trace of the truth could be found - despite the one hundred year difference. We knew with certainty only that it was the site of project 'Fox Fire'. Yet, given the parallels between the researches, it stood to reason that the investigation of the Kikyo Effect would have been nearby.

We learned through the Taisho that the building was commandeered by the military. It was returned at the end of the war. The family was anxious to use it, to expand business, however, it was abandoned amidst a scandal. It had not been used since the 1950's.

I could not contain my excitement. Hojo, too, salivated at the prospect. It was beyond our wildest expectation. A virginal site, virtually, untouched since its days of experimentations. Enough might have been left of the past to shine light on what happened. The haste that news prompted was such that we did not inquire about that 'scandal'.

When Hojo and I arrived we discovered an establishment caked with dust. It was daylight, still, and the sun's red, orange rays slanted through the windows where the glass was broken. Below the floors were smudged with the footprints of animals. Above the rafters were decorated with cobwebs, heavy with debris, sagging, dangling, tearing. The warehouse was wide, tall, empty - as abandoned as anything could be.

We covered our faces with our sleeves to fight the prickly, acrid taste of its air. Entering offices and other, little rooms, we explored, only to find nothing except a subtle yet distinct improvement with respect to the state of the building. The relics of the 1950's looked more and more 'new' and 'well-kept' until it seemed as if the place was just abandoned yesterday. Even the fixtures worked in spite of age.

We concluded that the Taisho's attempt to use the warehouse meant that whatever its military secrets were, upstairs they would have been erased but downstairs they might remain.

Behind a set of rusty, green hatches were the stairs that lead into the basement. Its doorway yielded inch by inch. Its hinges bled a dust of sharp, brittle rust and shrieked a wail that froze my blood. At last the path was clear....

It was odd, I admit, that I hesitated. After all of the truly unspeakable and unnatural places I encountered through my travels, why I paused, why I thought twice about it, I did not know. Maybe it was something about the air behind the hatches and the eerie, cool freshness it possessed. Maybe it was something about the absolute veil of onyx beyond the reach of the lamp and its portent of dread. It was too late to turn away....

How infallible is that backward glance of experience!

Within the basement of the warehouse we stood struck by its design. Its spartan almost crude architecture. Its twisted abuse of orientation. It was intended to wear the mind, like a device of torture, it worked flawlessly. We kept looking toward the stairs, step by step, to gauge where we walked as we explored baffled by the utter, impossible 'sameness' of everything.

The basement, as far as could be seen, was divided into ten-by-ten foot areas. Above, the ceilings were domes supported by columns - the whole of it was shaped by brick. Below, the floors were littered with falling, chipping paint - a red that used to coat the masonry.

We found footprints - some of it was animal but some of it was human. Curiously, the trails often started and ended randomly. It was as if the parties responsible at once appeared and at once vanished.

We noticed a network of cable, stuffed with wire, along the domes of the ceilings. Its function could not be determined. Every so often the cable curled about a chain at whose end hung a bulb. We could not say if the light worked, thought because a switch could not be located. We knew the building was powered - as the fixtures of the offices functioned - although, in retrospect, we should have questioned why....

We stood at what we thought was the center of the chamber. Was it ten minutes? Twenty minutes? Thirty minutes? It was impossible to say. We were paralyzed by a sense of disorientation even more subtle and profound than anything that could be caused by architecture. Because what seemed to be illusion then now attained a level of reality we were not prepared to accept - lamps could not discern the boundary of the basement - its pattern of construction extended indefinitely into infinity.

The dread that overwhelmed us was vast. We felt surrounded by a living - aware! - concentration of evil lurking below the surface forever beyond the grasp of man. The basement was endless - it was not trickery mixed with excitement. The chamber, through the light, revealed only row after row of column after column. The 'sameness' was identical in each and every direction. In each and every detail.

It was then that I recalled a detail of the memorandum. The clairvoyant suspected that time and space mixed queerly about the vicinity of the Kikyo Lady. That, in effect, she was a half of a pair caused by a bilocated-entity severed into a separate kind of 'existence'.

I told Hojo that we might be experiencing a warping of spacetime. A plane, instead of a tunnel, connecting into various times and spaces. The paralysis. The lethargy. A lack of orientation coupled with a vista unwinding, spiralling eternally. That pointed to a phenomenon related with the infamous experiments of Montuak - where it was claimed a thousand children were marched through a 'twisted, endless' 'tunnel of time' into the future.

We fled toward the stairs and ascended, ready to quit the expedition right then and there, until we made a fateful mistake. I shudder while I type. You will not believe it but at the end it is the least of my trouble. Of Hojo's trouble! You see - we looked back.

We looked back and were petrified at what we saw. As we gazed at the top of the stairs. As we looked outward, downward. It was breath-taking. A change altered the state of the basement and it happened while we raced to the top of the stairs. While we were not looking....

The light that had been dormant was activated and it blinded like day. The paint that had been rusted was freshened and it smelled like new. The ceilings and floors, too, were swept....

I was so shocked that I failed to notice another facet of change. I saw it - too late - and I shrieked like a child. I dropped my lamp and it rolled violently from step to step. Hojo only followed the fall of my light - that was why he did not see what I saw. At the foot of the stairs a face gazed upward. The shadow cast by the cap obscured its features with darkness yet the insignia of the brim revealed it was a Japanese imperial soldier.

As I darted aback - between breaths - the face withdrew in a slow motion drawl until not a trace of it remained.

I do not remember, exactly, how I agreed only that it happened - we stood at the foot of the stairs.

The world beneath the warehouse was different visually and aurally. The silence was replaced by a stream of noise. A frenzy of running, pounding, shouting. A smattering of laughter. The individual shouts of 'help me, help me' as well as a slew of maddened almost hateful replies. A language I could not identify was whispered by a woman then a child.

We were shocked yet ready to meet the sources of the sounds. They did not show despite the volume and the movement that could be heard. As we listened we realized why they would not show - the sounds were echoing out of the vista beyond the line of sight where the fabric of existence appeared to twist and spiral eternally.

We were listening to what was, what is, what will be....

Then, against every ounce of judgement with which we had been born, we again explored the basement of the warehouse.


	4. Chapter 4

Could it be that what we observed was the state of the basement at the wake of the Kikyo Effect experiments? Were time and space completely shredded by madness that a hundred years later the damage continued? A new and different kind of fear entered my consciousness - a dread inconceivable to those secure in location and continuity - because if these speculations were correct then we crossed into a portal. We could be anywhere, anytime, unable to return where we belonged.

It was a distortion of time and space. As I walked through rows of columns, restored unnaturally into the luster of nightmare, I clung onto that rationalization like a lifeline. Reason - it was my only connection to reality - and to restrain my emotion I recalled the details of experiments I already investigated, especially those involving Montuak.

Montuak, a base at the tip of Long Island, New York, was the epicenter of time travel conspiracy. It was claimed that a few, trained clairvoyants, assisted by equipment designed by Tesla, created portals between different times and different spaces. And it was claimed that soldiers were sent to explore those portals; those fortunate enough to return related how the portals looked like tunnels, like passages with doorways into other, parallel passages.

A picture was breaking through the fog, all of the details, all of the conjecture, it was adding up in front of my eyes and suddenly my tactic to soothe my spirit only worsened it.

It reeked of evil.

Those voices, by the gods, those voices. Frantic. Crazed. Disembodied. Their cacophony will not leave me!

Hojo and I were surrounded by a mob we could not see that was desperate to be free of that maze a shattered mix of time and space formed out of the basement. There were shouts of 'the stairs are blocked', cries of 'who's there, who's there', and a slew of vocalizations that froze our blood. If people were trapped within that portal...we shuddered at the implication...how did they survive?

We discovered a door - a door - without a wall. We accepted it. It was as strange as anything could be. Yet, at that juncture, what were we to do? It was wooden and reinforced with bands of metal. We did not find a knob, however, we noticed a hole which was shut at that moment.

We approached the door mindful that anybody could be hiding behind it. Hojo felt it while I watched just in case anything approached, worse, emerged. We took turns prying its hole, a rectangular slice of wood at the top of the door, it was tight as if locked. However, with a knife, we slid it enough to form a crack through which we peered.

We saw the world that existed behind the door - it was utterly, totally disconnected with the universe of that basement. It was a chamber stocked with equipment. We could not understand everything only portions that reminded us of antennas and other radio equipment.

At the center of that laboratory was a chair. It did not face us. While we could not see it, exactly, we knew by hints here and there that somebody sat at it. And that somebody was the focus of the experiment.

A woman appeared. Hojo gasped 'Kagome' while I said 'Kanna'. An man followed and we agreed it was Kagewaki.

A triangular loop of wire was placed atop the chair. A command was given. A switch was pulled. Soon sparks shot out of the loop as the chair (and its occupant) quivered. Soon, too, a wind passed through the door itself and the basement replied by taking the watery, hazy nature of a mirage.

I wanted to run but Hojo, still looking through that crack, refused to budge. I kept inching backward, alternately looking at my friend and at the stairway - it was so far away I feared my feet were going to fail if I needed to run. Sweating, almost crying, my heart raced with fear stoked by the wind that returned like the waves of the oceans.... I realized they were the signals coming out of those antennas.

I shouted to Hojo and begged the man to run even as I was sprinting, intermittently, toward the exit. His reply was to detail the play-by-play at the other side of the door. Kagome (he insisted on calling the woman Kagome) and Kagewaki spun the chair and now its occupant could be seen - it was the Kikyo Lady!

She was alive - if such a thing could be life - half-zombie, half-aware. She was restrained into the chair and fighting while sparks flew. Suddenly the chair burst into flames and Hojo screamed at the sight saying she was up - she was up - and attacking Kagewaki. The Kikyo Lady doll and Kagewaki fell into a rack of equipment and even I was able to see the explosion that followed through the blaze of light that flashed through the cracks of the door.

Hojo staggered away as somebody pounded against the door.

I screamed as at last it gave away and tumbled into a pile of wood.

Amidst the smoke and the fire I saw two shrunken, dead eyes and a face crisscrossed by a webwork of cracks gaze from the laboratory 'reality' to the basement 'reality'.

My shouts to run were ignored and I wondered if my voice joined the background of wails and cries. Was I part of the mob? Was I gone into a different time and space forever disconnected to Hojo? I do not know - only that I fled toward the stairs.

At the head of the stairs again I stopped and looked. As I watched the bright, red color of the 'new' basement disintegrated into the abysmal, onyx void of the 'old' basement. A flash of light left within my eyes the impression of the scene with the door. It was a snapshot of the Kikyo Lady under the frame of the door - she seemed to be crawling into the portal.

The portal itself did not fade out of existence. Rather, it lingered, and every so often, as the harmonies of the universe interweaved, she and her environment reappeared. But the effect lasted only a moment. And as soon as the harmonies disintegrated the everything vanished.

She aged perhaps a day a millennia. Last I saw she still stood under the door. In a hundred years she may be a foot into the portal. In a thousand years she may be a part of that chorus of voices. In a million years at last the cracking would be complete and she would be powder.

The Kikyo Effect - it was the blending of time into a singular point of space. There could be no doubt of it. The experiment, what little of it I witnessed, was the forerunner of Montuak - and, even, foretold its demise. As with 'the Bell', the Japanese were interested with mastering time and space and transforming it into a weapon. And as with everyone who tried to play god only a calamity of cosmic proportion followed....

In the wake of the experiment gone awry it seemed that reality was decimated in the vicinity of the warehouse.

I scaled the stairs with a limp as if my energy were wasted. I passed through the offices of the warehouse I felt my motion become more and more sluggish. I did not want to go but I did not want to stay. Something truly unspeakable happened in front of me and I was helpless to stop it.

I crossed through the garage dazed and confused. While I staggered I was bumped and fell onto the floor. Coughing, my eyes irritated by the dust, my brain too numb to register the shock of it, I tried to see what it was that knocked me off of my feet. What could be seen given the condition was a figure running toward the exit.

I called 'Hojo' but the figure did not react. I stood and chased it out of the warehouse. I paused and looked about the street. Night at that sector of the city did not yield a clue - the figure was gone - and I was baffled.

What happened? I wondered - and then I thought about Hojo.

Was he, too, a part of that portal? What would be his fate?

I shuddered as a whole, new universe of fear overwhelmed me. As Sesshoumaru - the Taisho contact - found me and took me away. As I returned to my home in the wilderness of the Dakotas. I cannot sleep without the sounds of those voices echoing in my dreams. And then I awake only to confront another aspect of this tragedy - a realization of a folly that must be blamed on my oversight.

A hundred years the world was safe, free of the aftermath of the Kikyo Effect, yet my intervention jeopardized that peace. Already, as I spoke to Sesshoumaru, I suspected something escaped - and now I knew the certainty of it. The Taisho were so careful to hide it and barricade it and it only took a pair of interlopers to waste their efforts - because, you see, when I fled I did not shut the door to the basement!

END


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